Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [2]
And then, suddenly it was more than sounds. They were corning very fast – big heavy horses making the earth throb with the hammer blows of their feet, and they seemed to take over the world. Jane could no longer hear insects or birds, she was aware only of this one stream of noise bearing down on her.
And now there were voices too, rising above the hooves, men’s shouts encouraging the horses and spurring them to even greater speed. Startled, Jane moved across the farmyard to look out between the buildings at the surrounding countryside.
Like everything else, it seemed that the usually placid green landscape of fields and trees and hedgerows had altered its character. Instead of a gently pastoral scene it had become a page from her school history hooks: the seventeenth century was moving towards her across a field, thundering out of the misty past in the shape of three horses – two chestnuts flanking a grey – and riders flushed with the excitement and danger of the English Civil War.
They came abreast of one another. The horseman on the left had the broad, plumed hat and extravagantly embroidered clothing of a Cavalier of King Charles the First; the other two wore battledress – the steel breastplates and helmets of mounted troopers. The middle rider, on the big grey horse, carried a brightly coloured banner.
They were an awe-inspiring sight. With her hands on her hips and her mouth open in amazement, .Jane watched them approach the farm. When they neared the buildings the rider on the left spurred his horse and galloped ahead of the others. He came through the gap between the farm buildings; as he entered the farmyard and approached Jane he slowed to a canter. She had a clear view of a sharp-featured face, with waxed moustache, pointed heard and shoulder-length wig under the great nodding peacock feather which adorned his hat. He was the perfect image of a seventeenth-century Cavalier.
Jane was speechless. The Cavaller cantered past her with a supercilious stare. Now the troopers were in the farmyard too; their horses’ hooves clattered on the baked clay earth. They also passed by, paying her no heed at all.
Then something odd happened, as frightening as it was unexpected. The troopers wheeled their horses around to face Jane. The rider on the grey horse lowered his banner and pointed it straight at her, like a lance. And suddenly without warning he shouted and urged his horse into action. The point of the banner swept forward. They gathered speed, looming at Jane out of the shimmering heat of the enclosed farmyard.
Jane felt her stomach muscles contract with fear. Her open-mouthed wonder turned to disbelief at the sight of the lunging horse and its rider thundering towards her. All her senses concentrated on the banner; her whole attention narrowed to that single point of steel which held firm and steady, and pointed at her body like a skewer.
This can’t be happening, she thought, it’s impossible.
Yet the point came on, propelled by horses’ hooves and rider’s shouts. She began to run.
‘Aaargh!’ the trooper screamed. His horse tossed its head; its nostrils flared and its hooves bit into the ground and brought up clouds of dust. ‘There’s no sense in this,’
the logical side of, Jane’s mind was protesting, but at the same time her instinct for self-preservation was working flat out, and with only a split second to spare she threw herself against a wall, pressing her hody into its rough stone.
The lance swept harmlessly past her and the hooves pounded by. She was momentarily aware of a stern, steel-helmeted face glaring at her, and then it, too, passed on.
‘Don’t be so stupid!’ she screamed after the rider. ‘You’ll kill somebody!’
Her chest heaving, Jane moved away from the wall to look for the other riders. She tried to control her temper and the trembling which had suddenly afflicted her frame.
As her eyes searched the yard the sunlight dazzled them, the